Talk:Joseph Young
Your writing was intelligent and thoughtful, but it could have used some fine-tuning to make it into a stronger, more cohesive argument.
1) Sources: Zittrain's book is a great read, but was not applicable to your argument. He mainly discusses how the Internet is becoming a propriety venture from its original purpose of a free communication tool. Your position is that the social networks are removing the "organic" nature of human interactions. The connection between the two was not clear. I did not think to use a blog post as one of my sources, and I thought your use of it was clever and applicable. The only problem is that it is hard to validate the accuracy of a blog post made by a completely anonymous user.
2) Avatar Process: You made a good point about how it was easier to create a fantasy character than a realistic one. This point was good at coming back to your central argument, which was about how technology is limited and does not capture the organic facets of human nature. I have to disagree with the argument you're making, however. I think the comparison you make between social networks and evolver.com is unfair: social networks definitely do remove what you call the organic aspects of human nature, but I don't think evolver.com was made to replace social interaction like you state. Evolver.com is just a tool to make rather accurate 3D pictures. It is not meant to serve as a virtual environment for people to communicate with each other.
3) Organization: You made valid arguments about how social networking sites are changing human interactions by removing the "organic" aspects of face-to-face communication. It just didn't seem coherent when you paired it up with the avatar construction process. The two parts seemed very disjoint.
Overall, I liked your essay, and was definitely more insightful than the majority of the others written here.
-L Andrews
Overall I thought the quality of the reflection was very good. It was an extremely detailed account of the painstaking process many of us endured. In my own creation process, I encountered many of the same problems, and experienced many of the same realizations throughout the process. This made your reflection very relatable and realistic.
Though I am not familiar with the source you cited, I thought the connection was a little bit of a stretch. That being said, I don't usually associate Facebook profiles, etc. to be avatars, this is my personal opinion. Therefore, the connection you were trying to forge between social networks and the digitization of human interaction didn't really hit home for me. I don't really see how the Evolver software corresponds or replaces the personas created in social networks like Facebook. Maybe I misinterpreted your connection, but I just didn't really seem to understand it.
Outside of the source incorporation, I followed your train of thought extremely well. You described very accurately the avatar process and some of the shortcomings your observed. Many of the more 'organic' elements that we find as we interact with humans on a day-to-day basis were overlooked in the Evolver software. However, that can be expected because there is no exact replication software available. Another interesting approach you could have explored more would be some of the other software available for creating avatars and how other programs better address these shortcomings. In general, it was an insightful and complete reflection.
- M. Erickson
1. Outside source:
I thought you did a pretty good job of incorporating outside sources. The use of Zittrain's book elevated your reflection to cover more of the academic purposes of this exercise. Though not entirely relevant to your argument, it made me reflect deeply on how avatars can be used in person-to-person connection online through the use of avatars. Likewise, your incorporation of the blogger added another dimension to your reflection, which I found benefited the reader.
2. Process
I thought you did a great job of talking about some of the issues that you faced in creating your avatars. I like you started off by explicitly stating that you did not think that creating a self-portrait avatar would be a daunting task, however as you sat down to do it, you realized how difficult it was. I could completely relate to the part in which you described that frustration of having to go back and forth from the bathroom mirror to your computer. Also, I liked how you talked about the difficulty of adding your facial hair and glasses to your avatar. There are certain physical characteristics that I was unable to add to my avatar which frustrated me too, so I could feel your pain.
Overall, I thought your reflection was a great read. It definitely incorporated the academic aspects of this assignment in a way that went above and beyond what was expected of us. You organized your reflection well, and it had a very nice flow to it. Well done!
-Kevin Pena
